


Dark Crimson

by chappedlipsfingertips



Category: The Handmaid's Tale (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-06-10 21:44:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15300657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chappedlipsfingertips/pseuds/chappedlipsfingertips
Summary: Five years' post the Season 2 finale, Hannah learns the truth about what Gilead meant for her mother.





	Dark Crimson

The biggest problems in Hannah's life since she started eighth grade were making sure she studied enough for math tests, trying to find as much face-time as possible between second and third periods with her crush Aiden, and remembering which days she was her Dad's versus when she was at Mom's and Nick's.

It had been harder before, four years ago when she first got to Canada. But Hannah rarely thought of it. In fact, by the time the end of September rolled around, it had probably been at least a year since she mentioned any of it to the therapist her parents were still making her see every other week. Lately, the conversation had been about her friends' problems, the nervous dread of high school being around the corner, her Dad's new girlfriend, and the annoyance that was her Mom and Nick sitting her and Holly and Owen down and announcing they were having yet another baby back in August.

This day in particular, Hannah was looking forward to dinner with Dad because he'd promised that Miranda wasn't going to be there. Then there was babysitting Holly and Owen the next night for Mom and Nick, making a little extra money, and spending it at the mall with Abbie and Kylie on Sunday.

That was, until she got to History class.

Her teacher, Mrs. Campos, was looking stoic as soon as they walked in.

"I bet we're getting a pop quiz," Kylie said under her breath as the girls walked towards their desks. "If we do, you owe me a smoothie Sunday."

Hannah giggled and Kylie went up the second row to her seat. Aiden was seated at the front of the third row. Hannah caught him smiling at her, and he looked down, brushing his hair out of his face.

She made a mental note to tell Kylie all about it on their walk to their buses after class.

Once everyone got in their seats, Mrs. Campos pulled down a map of Gilead.

Hannah felt her stomach drop. Sure, the war had been going on for a while, but her family had moved from Little America in Toronto two years ago up to a suburb outside of Edmonton. Hannah remembered it being a point of contention between her parents.

She wasn't supposed to listen, and she knew that, but Dad's apartment had been small and he wasn't good at being quiet.

"It'd be safer," Mom had insisted, and Hannah had immediately stopped in her tracks in her room, where she'd been sent as soon as Dad saw Mom's face.

"It's overkill."

"We all barely sleep," Mom had snapped back. "Just because you feel fine here doesn't mean the rest of us do."

That'd been the first and last time Hannah heard Mom explicitly state that Dad didn't get it.

But she had always known. While they'd all tried to talk about Gilead as little as possible, when she got nightmares at Mom and Nick's, they understood. They'd talk about how sad it was for them when she had to leave them at her old family's summer home. How they'd wanted to take her with them right then, not a year later like they did.

"It's important to know who exactly we're fighting," Mrs. Campos said, and Hannah snapped back in to the present. She scanned the classroom at her peers' faces, suddenly aware that no one else was going to be a panicked as she was. Even in Little America, there were only two kids in her group therapy that had actually lived in Gilead. Most of the refugee kids had escaped before everything happened.

Mrs. Campos touched a few buttons on the smart board in the classroom and Hannah felt her hands start to sweat. She looked to her right and saw Kylie staring at her, concerned. Kylie was the only person in the room who knew Hannah had lived there.

When Hannah turned back to the projector, her stomach fell to her feet.

It was an image of a woman the dark crimson dress, the white wings. Hannah saw her mother, kneeling in front of her in the snow, how the thin red fabric of her dress and the smell of her hair under the bonnet were often present in her dreams afterwards until they finally came to rescue her.

"How many of you have heard of handmaids?"

Hannah saw most of the hands in the room go up, but she couldn't force hers to move off of the surface of her desk.

Trey, a boy with a history of speaking out of turn in class piped up from the back.

"Those are the women they rape, right?"

Hannah's neck might have snapped from how hard she pulled her gaze up to Mrs. Campos, waiting for her correct him.

But Mrs. Campos looked down at the floor for a moment instead. When she raised her eyes to the class, they were hardened.

"They're forced to carry babies, yes."

There was a heavy silence for a moment and then the class broke out into a frenzy of questions.

"Couldn't they choose that?"

"I heard that they tie handmaids down."

"Mrs. Campos, isn't that illegal?"

"Is that why the war started?"

Hannah bit the inside of her cheek and never took the pressure off until the bell rang. 

Kylie was on her heels, but Hannah didn't turn back. She didn't even go to her locker to get her backpack. None of it mattered. All she knew was that she needed to get out and she needed actual answers. 

"Hannah?" She could hear Kylie calling for her in the hallway, but Hannah didn't stop pushing through the hallway of students being dismissed for the day.

"Aren't you supposed to be going to your dad's?" 

Hannah didn't pause. She got on the bus, and threw herself into a seat. She shoved earphones in her ears and tuned out her own music as she stared out the window and focused on not crying in front of everyone.

As soon as she got off the bus, she broke into a run for the four blocks it took to get to the house. At the front door of Mom and Nick's, she paused, realizing her key was in her backpack. Hannah pounded on the door, and a moment later, a surprised Nick answered the door.

Hannah hadn't even registered that his car was in the driveway.

His furrowed brow softened slightly when he looked at her.

"Hannah, what's wrong? What are you doing here? Did something happen with your dad?"

She pushed past him into the house, desperate to find her mother.

"Hannah?" Nick repeated, as he shut the door, and then something bubbled up inside of her as she spun on her heel and turned to him.

"Did you rape her?"

She watched Nick stagger backwards a step.

"Did you rape Mom, to make Holly?"

"What? Where --"

"Handmaids get raped!" She screamed at him, the sobs that she'd been suppressing following immediately afterwards. 

She heard footsteps come down the stairs, and then her mother appeared, her face just as shocked as Nick's.

With tears streaming down her face, Hannah turned to her mother. She wanted to get it together, to have an actual conversation, but she was too overwhelmed to stop crying. 

"Why didn't you tell me?" She managed, through hiccups.

Hannah watched her mother's shoulders sink as she audibly exhaled.

"I didn't want you to know," her mother finally said.

Hannah wrapped her arms around her torso, and moved her gaze to Nick, who had slowly made his way over towards them. 

"Nick wasn't the one who did that to me, Hannah," her mother said, and that was all it took for Hannah to fall to her knees.

Her mother and then Nick met her on the floor, hugging her and holding her tightly as she cried. Disbelief had already started to set in.

When Nick and her mom came to rescue her, Hannah remembered how Nick's hands shook while he drove them and how her mom had been so strong, so confident that they were going to be safe. How had her mother survived and been okay? Hannah was old enough that they'd talked about sexual assault in health class and she knew that a lot of women struggled with it. But Mom had always seemed so strong.

Nick finally pulled away.

"I need to pick Holly up from the bus stop," he said. "I'll call Luke on the way and tell him you're here."

He squeezed Hannah's shoulder and then went out the door.

"Banana, you wanna talk in your room so Holly doesn't interrupt when she gets home?" When her mom pulled away, Hannah could see that she had been crying, too. Hannah wiped at her face haphazardly and nodded. She took her mom's hand, who led her up the stairs.

Hannah sat on her bed and hugged a bear to her chest. Her mom sat next to her. Hannah watched her mom clasp and unclasp her hands.

"I always meant to tell you," her mom started. "I just didn't know how to."

Hannah nodded and squeezed the bear tightly.

"I promise Nick never did anything like that," her mother said. She cleared her throat. "Nick and I actually made her so that my commander wouldn't touch me anymore." Hannah watched her shake her head. "I mean, that isn't the only reason. I love Nick, too. But Holly wasn't just made out of love."

Hannah nodded again, still stunned into silence.

"I'm sorry you had to find out at school. I should have told you sooner."

Hannah bit her lip, and felt the tears start again.

"I think all of the kids in my class are Canadian."

Hannah watched her mom squint her eyes, pained.

"That must have been hard, to feel alone like that."

Hannah nodded. She blinked her tears back as best she could. She was almost angry at herself for not being able to talk much. She'd focused on what she was going to say on her run over here, how she was going to tell her mother that she'd had a right to know from her mom and not her schoolteacher, how she was so embarrassed in class that the lesson was about her mom that she didn't want to go back to school on Monday. But all of that had fallen apart when she saw her mother crying. When she remembered that her mom had been violated. Maybe repeatedly. Probably repeatedly.

"I wish you'd told me sooner," she finally admitted.

She watched her mom drop her head a bit. When she lifted it again, Hannah could see that her mom was crying again.

"Remember how you wore pink?"

Hannah could only nod, suddenly surrounded by her closet of soft pastels of pink that her other family had provided. How she'd missed blues and yellows and floral patterns and polka dots like she wore back when they lived in Boston.

"You were going to be a handmaid, too."

Hannah felt her stomach drop again.

"Dad and I had you when he was still technically with his first wife." Hannah was relieved when her mom dropped her gaze away from her again. She felt lied to. She felt like a sheltered idiot. 

"You were the daughter of adulterers in Gilead's eyes. I was a handmaid because of what your dad and I did. You were going to be one because of that." Her mom let out a sob, and Hannah hugged her bear tighter in response. "I didn't ever want you to know what would have become of you if Nick and I got stopped before we could get you." She watched her mom wipe at her face. "They married girls off at fifteen. You would have started your training soon."

Hannah felt like the wind had been knocked out of her. In two years, she would have been wearing red, too.

"I didn't keep it from you because I think you're a little kid or that you can't handle it," her mom finally admitted, looking Hannah in the eye. "It's because it's hard for me to handle myself. And I'm sorry, Hannah."

Hannah instinctually leaned forward and her mom opened her arms to embrace her. Hannah closed her eyes and pressed her nose into her mom's shoulder, inhaling like she did when they'd said goodbye after their short meeting. 

The front door made a muffled sound downstairs, and Hannah could hear Holly giggling through the foyer.

"Owen's napping," Nick told her, and Hannah couldn't help but roll her eyes. She'd get to tiptoe around the house for another few years once her mom had the new baby in March.

Hannah pulled away from her mother and watched her wipe the remainder of tears from her face.

"You okay?" 

Hannah nodded.

"Yeah."

"I can bring you to your dad's if you want," her mom offered. While part of Hannah wanted to pretend that nothing happened and go out to dinner with her father, she shook her head. She wanted to be with her mom and Nick and her little sister and brother. 

Her mom nodded in response. 

"We should probably call him and let him know you're staying here, then."

As her mom stood up, Hannah suddenly felt scared again. Scared that she had been so close to a living nightmare, to all the awful things Mrs. Campos had told them earlier. 

"Mommy?" she heard herself ask, and normally she would have been horrified by how little she sounded considering she was supposed to be grown-up as a thirteen-year-old.

"Yeah Banana?"

"Can you sleep with me in here tonight?"

Her mom's face softened.

"Of course, baby."

Hannah felt herself give the tiniest of smiles in relief.

"If you're feeling better, I know Holly is gonna be really excited to see you. I had to disappoint her this morning and tell her you wouldn't be here until tomorrow."

Hannah got up from her bed, knowing that no matter how much of a pain her little sister could be, that Holly's stories from her day at kindergarten would probably cheer her up.

Her mom waited for her at the door of her bedroom, and once Hannah got there, her mom put an arm around her. 

"I love you, kid," her mom told her.

Hannah closed her eyes, suddenly thankful that even on the nights when she was at her dad's, she could call her mom and hear her say those words. Gilead might have been reality for a while, and it might still haunt her from time to time, but it was in the past and it always would be.

**Author's Note:**

> After the finale, I can't help but want Nick and June to have thirty babies just so he can hold all of them and cry. I'm such a sucker.


End file.
